ORDER

From the first days of fist-grab and chew, to the endless delight of pop-them-in-half, to the never-ending joy of peeling away each infinitesimal bit of paper from the smooth, waxy crayons, all the way to now---a conserving and a respect which call for the lining-up-and-keeping in the tiny lunchbox from Aunt Kim and Uncle Mike---the days of childish things are evolving.

And order---despite the still-scrawling, WAY-outside-the-lines artistic license of our little one, she’s learning the order of things. Smooth rainbow rows precede most coloring sessions, and sometimes they are the entire endeavor itself, those lined-up pastels and darks and exotically named “Macaroni and Cheese” oranges and fanciful blues.

I think so, myself, for I, too, was a conservator of coloring and writing tools, even at her age. A new box of EIGHT was a treasure, and once I played at the house of a friend who had THIRTY-TWO. I bought my own first box of Sixty-Four when I had my own children, and I shared it lavishly with those small hands still in the crack-and-bite stage, for who knows what childish dreams are made that way?

And a new #2 Ticonderoga and First-Day-Of-School’s virginal tablet---bliss, and you wouldn’t see me or get my attention for days. I wrote and wrote, scribbling little plays and stories and poems. There’s an order in that, as much as in the tidy ranks of the color-lines, for the putting down of thoughts gets things into their places.


I need order, today, I think, more than anything else. I need to attend to, or at least decrease, the pile of laundry which seems to have been my only saving grace in these days of a houseful of sickness. It was simple to sort, toss in, start the rush of water, pour in the detergent and lower the lid, imagining the hardships of this kind of cold on a washday of even my Mammaw’s time---I was fifteen when she got her new house, all modern and bright, a small five-room little haven with the washer right there in the big bathroom, Queen a Sheba convenient as all get-out.

The drying was still done in the outdoors, Winter and Summer---the long lines stretched between trees and FruitHouse, the adjunct to the chickenhouse, and repository of all the canned goods, stored things, discarded things, might-need-someday things, and whatever other saved-ups still hung around for decades in those days before Goodwill.

The lines of sheets were so beautiful out there in the green, blowing white in the wind, and the scent of the Rinso (“Like Washing with Sunshine!”) floating over into the little area of my outdoor kitchen where I turned out the most elegant mud-pies, was like the puff of perfume from my Mother’s dresser drawer.

Sis just said yesterday that her Italy trip holds memories of clotheslines everywhere, hanging from windows and balconies and rooftops, all the daily personals of the family flapping right out there in the sun, and visible in the same camera frame as the Vatican, the Doge’s Palace, the canals, the rolling hills of Tuscany. And that, too, is an order of things, carried on for centuries, and likely to live forever. I hope so.

I’m thankful to be IN, and to HAVE these clean things, cluttered as the rooms are becoming with stacks and sorts. And order there will be. Slow and sure, though this tortoise falters now and again, still a bit weak and trembly from the tempest, and reaching for the red Jello and a break now and again.

So, back to the washer, to fill and load, and to heed the dryer’s hum, and then the snap and fold of towels, shirts, pants. There’s even a sermon in sorting socks, if we just heed the words.